Labics

Looking from a territorial point of view the Municipality of Venice, since its constitution, has had a dual nature: on one side the insular portions of territory which refer to Venice, on the other the mainland structured around the city of Mestre. In reality the symbolic weight, the beauty and the role of Venice have always unbalanced this duality relegating Mestre to a real peripheral role respect to the insular centre.

But today this balance, although instable, doesn’t work anymore as Venice is not anymore a Centre. The city is shrinking, the population between 20 and 34 years old is on the run; de facto Venice today is not the driving force, the engine for its surrounding territory. Venice has become an important turistic attractor on a global scale but completely detached from the surroundings. The territory clearly needs another centre. An anti-pole of Venice, as it is in the territory nature and organization.

Subject

The subject of the workshop will then be the design of this anti-pole: a new centre for the territory able to be the engine for a sustainable urban growth. In other words a centre able to built a new mental image for the city of Venice. In this sense Marghera represents a great opportunity, both for its extension – its territory is bigger than the one of Venice – and for the identity and fascination it bears.

It is infact about an heroic territory, extracted during the past century from the lagoon, witness of various events linked to the growth and decline of italian industry. A site of production and progress but also of pain and suffering. A territory which artifacts testify a collective history which in turn can be the basis for the foundation of a new identity.

Scope and programs

The scope of the workshop will then be the design of a post-industrial centre, provided with a great density of programs and functions complementary to the ones already existing on the territory and able to create with them new synergies; a structure that has the capacity of reinforcing the surrounding territory.

The identity of this new Venice anti-pole will be the one of an important creativty incubator and at the same time of a production site. A light production wich will be based on three key factors: culture, technology and nature; a production linked with the knowledge economy and with creativity: theatre, dance, visual arts, video making, new media, IT, urban agricolture, etc.

Moreover the workshop will investigate the form of the territory: Marghera is infact the result of an artificial process of transformation of the natural edge of the lagoon. So it appears the opportunity of redefining the relation between water and land.

Methodology

For this purpose we will borrow some operating instruments developed in the ’70 by Rem Koolhas and Oswald Mathias Ungers for the transformation of Berlin in Archipelago City.*

The design process will be organized following three steps: selection, infrastructuring and completion.

1. The first step will be the selection of all the buildings and structures to be conserved that contribute in shaping the identity and the beauty of the current Marghera

2. The second step will be the project of the infrastructure. The infrastructure will be the skeleton of the project and at the same time the background of all the interventions; infrastructuring will define the structure of open spaces, the system of services, the network of paths and circulation.

3. Last step will be the project for the re-use and completino of the existing choosen building, in coherence with the new foreseen activies and programs.